PPC Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) Calculator

Do you know how much you spend on ads?

Better yet, do you know how much that spend makes back?

Enter ROAS (return on ad spend), which is the number that closes that gap.

It tells you how much revenue you generate for every pound you spend on advertising. And it’s by far the clearest measure of whether a campaign is making money or burning it.

A ROAS of 4 means you are generating £4 for every £1 spent.

Whether that is good depends entirely on your margins and your business model.

And that’s why you need this tool to do the maths.

Below, we help you understand what your number actually means for ecommerce, Google Shopping, and lead generation.

Enter your figures above and read on before you judge the result.

How to Use This Tool

For ecommerce and Google Shopping, enter your total ad spend for the period and the total revenue generated from those ads.

The tool then calculates your ROAS as a multiplier and as a percentage return.

For lead generation, enter your ad spend and the estimated value of the leads or clients generated.

We explain how to arrive at that figure if you do not have it to hand below.

Use a consistent time period for both numbers, like a week, a month, or a quarter.

It can produce misleading results if you mix spend from one period with revenue from another.

How ROAS for Google Shopping Works

Google Shopping campaigns are practically made for ecommerce.

When someone searches for a product, Shopping ads appear at the top of the results with an image, a price, and a retailer name.

Then, the click goes directly to a product page, where the purchase happens.

This is where revenue is recorded. ROAS is revenue divided by spend.

That directness is what makes Google Shopping one of the most measurable advertising channels available.

You know what you spent, what sold, and you can calculate your return on every single penny.

A ROAS of 4 is a commonly cited benchmark for Google Shopping.

But that number means nothing without knowing your margins. If your product costs £60 to make and sells for £100, your gross margin is 40%.

A ROAS of 4 means you generate £4 in revenue per £1 of ad spend, but your profit after product cost is much thinner.

Factor in shipping, returns, and overheads, and a ROAS of 4 might be profitable, marginal, or a huge loss, depending on your business.

This is why ROAS is best understood alongside your break-even ROAS, which is also known as the minimum return you need from your ad spend before the campaign starts making money.

To calculate this, divide 1 by your gross margin percentage. If your gross margin is 40%, your break-even ROAS is 2.5.

Anything above that is profit. If it’s lower, then it’s a loss.

Google Shopping campaigns also benefit from product-level ROAS analysis.

An account-level ROAS of 5 might mask a product group returning 12 and another returning 1.8.

If you understand ROAS at the product level, this tells you where to increase bids, where to cut spend, and where pricing or margin undermines an otherwise healthy campaign.

ROAS for Lead Generation

ROAS was built for ecommerce, where revenue is recorded at the point of sale.

Lead generation businesses generate an enquiry that may or may not become a client, and there is no guarantee this becomes repeat business.

To calculate ROAS for a lead generation campaign, you need three numbers:

• your ad spend
• number of leads
• the value of those leads to your business

Most people stop at the last figure because it requires honest arithmetic rather than a dashboard number.

Start with your average client value. If you run a landscaping business and the average job is worth £1,800, that is your starting point.

Now apply your close rate, which is the percentage of enquiries that become paying clients.

If you close 40% of enquiries, each lead is worth 40% of £1,800, which is £720.

Divide your total ad spend by the number of leads to get your cost per lead, then divide your total estimated lead value by your ad spend to get your ROAS.

For example, the Hayeswood Spray Granite and Resin Solutions campaign.

In April 2026, the campaign generated 9 leads from £337.96 in spend, a cost per lead of £37.55.

For a surfacing contractor where a single resin driveway job is worth several thousand pounds, the ROAS, even at a conservative close rate, is significant.

The same logic applies across service businesses.

For example, a solicitor who pays £80 per lead for conveyancing enquiries, closes 50% of them into clients worth £1,500 each in fees, generates a ROAS of around 9.4.

Or a personal trainer who pays £25 per lead for clients worth £600 over an average engagement, closes 30%, generates a ROAS of 7.2.

Basically, ROAS is the number that shows you whether your advert is profitable.

What Is a Good ROAS?

There is no universal answer, of course, because margins vary considerably for different businesses.

For Google Shopping, a ROAS of 4 to 8 is typical for well-managed campaigns in competitive retail categories.

High-ticket products or offers, such as software, luxury goods and digital products, can sustain profitable campaigns at lower ROAS because the margin per sale is greater.

Low-margin products, like discounted goods, need a higher ROAS to remain profitable because there is less room between revenue and cost.

For lead generation, the most useful benchmark is your own numbers, rather than an industry average.

Calculate your break-even ROAS and use that as your floor.

If your campaign is running above break-even ROAS, congratulations, it’s working.

The clients we work with give a sense of the range.

A cost per conversion of £10.67 for Toolmix in a single month is a strong ROAS for a tool hire business where a single booking generates meaningful revenue.

The Gentle Mind, a therapy practice, pays around £18 per enquiry, which is highly profitable when held against the lifetime value of a client attending regular sessions.

How to Improve Your ROAS

If your ROAS is below where it needs to be, specific levers move it.

These are the same principles covered in the cost per conversion calculator, applied to the ROAS frame.

Improve Your Product Feed for Shopping Campaigns

For Google Shopping, the product feed is the campaign.

Titles that include relevant search terms, accurate pricing, high-quality images, and complete attribute data all affect how often your ads appear and how relevant they are to the audience.

Raise Bids on High-ROAS Products, Cut Spend on Low-ROAS Ones

Once you have enough data to see ROAS at the product or product group level, rebalance your budget toward what is working.

For example, you could increase bids on products with a strong ROAS to help the algorithm find more potential customers.

Reducing spend on products with weak ROAS stops the budget leaking into wasted placements.

Yes, it may sound obvious, but most accounts don’t do it because it requires looking at the data at a granular level rather than managing the campaign as a single unit.

Fix the Landing Page

If you have a high click-through rate and a low conversion rate, then your landing page is the problem.

Common causes include:

• slow load times
• a checkout process with friction
• pricing that doesn’t match the ad
• product pages that don’t answer the customers' problems

Page weight matters here.

A product page loading at 6.4 MB on mobile, like AS Bikes' old site, loses visitors before they see the offer or product.

The same page at 498 KB loads fast enough to keep them. Conversion rate and ROAS improve when you cut the page weight.

Tighten Your Keyword and Search Term Control

For search campaigns running alongside Shopping, the same principles apply as with any PPC campaign. Broader targeting means more irrelevant clicks, which causes a lower ROAS.

Negative keywords, tighter match types, and regular search term reviews protect ROAS because they guarantee budget goes on searches with genuine purchase intent.

Understand Assisted Conversions

ROAS calculations based on last-click attribution undercount the contribution of campaigns that appear earlier in the buying journey.

A customer who clicks a Shopping ad, leaves, and returns three days later through a direct search will not attribute their purchase to the Shopping campaign in a last-click model.

Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads’ attribution settings offer a complete picture.

When you understand assisted value, you can protect your campaigns from cuts.

ROAS and Profitability Are Not the Same Thing

This distinction is important, because conflating the two can lead to bad decisions.

ROAS measures revenue return on ad spend, but it doesn’t account for the cost of goods sold, fulfilment, returns, platform fees, or any other cost between revenue and profit.

A campaign with a ROAS of 3 on a product with a 60% gross margin is highly profitable.

The number that matters is ROAS relative to your business and the margin structure.

Calculate your break-even ROAS before you judge any campaign result, and build your target ROAS around the margin you need to protect.

This beats an industry benchmark ten times out of ten.

For lead generation businesses, you must know your close rate and client lifetime value before deciding whether your cost per lead is acceptable.

Whether a £60 lead is cheap or expensive depends entirely on the value when it converts.

And ROAS gives you the framework to answer that question properly.